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Permalink Reply by David Rennie on May 3, 2011 at 20:34

Dave: re With AV, does every MP get 50% of support?

So it was me myself I was criticising (!) when I said that one cannot categorically go quite as far as to say: "With AV, every MP must be supported by over 50% of voters who express a preference between the front-runners."

It appears that, by the time I read your post, I was setting the bar higher than when I wrote the note – and did not realise I had!

Having criticised the No campaign for misinformation, I tried to put nothing in my note I could not substantiate fairly well. (That was why I introduced the "50% who express a preference between the two final front-runners".)

I based the 50% statement on a scan through a random sample of some 20% of the 650 detailed election results of the 2010 election. That scan confirmed what I wrote. When you highlighted the statement as a key point for you, I thought: Yes, almost certainly right – but could there still be rare situations where the 2nd votes of all the smaller parties alone could reverse the order of the front-runners when added to the challenger, without the 2nd preferences of the large 3rd party being counted? If so, it could invalidate my 50% statement.

Compared with the iniquity of FPTP – and No's misinformation – this is falling over backwards to be honest. But I am doing an interesting little study which may be more conclusive about this. I'll try to post it on Wed so people see it before the Referendum.

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Permalink Reply by Dave McNeill on May 3, 2011 at 20:44

I think we're pretty much in agreement.

 

A lot of the misinformation from the Noes stems from the relative simplicity of interpretation of FPTP. 'I got the most votes so I win.' They want us to compare the final outcome of a FPTP poll with the first round of a preferential vote. That's the fallacy (and I believe they know full well that it's a fallacy).

 

I'll say it again - under AV, in the final round *all* of those who voted for the winner, preferred them over the runner-up. There could not be a situation, whereby the runner-up is more  preferred than the winner.

 

(BTW, I've come to believe that the term AV was chosen to refer to the system due to the negative connotations of the word 'Alternative'. Elsewhere in the world the terms 'preferential' and 'instant run-off' appear to be prevalent.)

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Permalink Reply by Richard McKeever on May 5, 2011 at 11:28

A very timely polling station Image

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